NEET exam should be held in 2 stages like UPSC, JEE: Alakh Pandey said- Even a student who scores 700 marks is depressed

‘When I was in college in 2010, we used to hear a lot about paper leaks. Today in 2024, I am a teacher. 14 years of my life have passed but paper leaks still happen in the same way.’

This is what PW founder and teacher Alakh Pandey has to say. Alakh has complained about the irregularities in the NEET UG results in the Supreme Court. In an exclusive interview with Dainik Bhaskar, he answered our questions and unraveled the entire matter layer by layer.

Alakh Pandey has filed a petition in the Supreme Court against the irregularities in grace marks in the NEET exam and its results. The next hearing on this is to be held on 8 July.

Question 1 – This year, a large number of toppers have emerged in the NEET results. Even with a score of 700+, it is difficult to get admission in a government college. What can be the solution to this?

answer – Bulking on high scores is a big problem. This time the rank for a score of 700 is 2300. This is a big problem. Even a student who scores 720 out of 720 will not be able to get admission in AIIMS Delhi. One solution to this problem could be that a pattern like UPSC or JEE Advanced should be adopted in NEET as well. That is, candidates should be filtered through a prelims paper and then there should be a mains paper for government medical colleges.

In the JEE Advanced result, there is a difference of 40 marks between rank 1 and rank 50, whereas in NEET, there are 67 students on rank 1. In such a situation, 2 tier exam can be a solution to rank bulking.

Question 2 – Before 2017, NEET exam was conducted by CBSE. CBSE also had experience of conducting big exams. So why was the responsibility of the exam given to NTA?

answer – The government had created an autonomous testing agency in the form of NTA. It is not that NTA conducts only NEET but also JEE, CUET, UGC NET exams. I believe that to some extent this decision was also right according to the time, because the examination department has a lot of operational work.

But as per the things that are visible till now, the working of NTA does not seem to be right. However, this is not the case only with NTA. Papers are leaked in almost all the bodies that conduct exams. I am not defending NTA, but questions should be raised on all the bodies.

In the last 5 years, about 40 papers have been leaked in different states. Paper leak is not related to any one institution. Paper leak is nothing new, it is in the nature of this country.

Question 3 – At what level does the mistake occur – in making the paper, in delivering it to the centres, or in distributing it at the exam centres – which leads to the paper getting leaked?

answer – There is a whole syndicate behind the paper leak. As the country progressed, the syndicate also progressed. When we brought technology, they also brought technology. When we brought thumb print, they brought fake sheets of thumb print. Now we have brought biometrics, so they have come up with a solution for this too.

In Jhajjar, the person who had to bring the paper from the bank to the centre, the bank official told him to bring the paper from another bank as well. So what happened was that two sets of papers arrived. Two sets of papers were distributed to the students due to which there was a complete mess. That means there is a challenge in paper distribution as well.

Question 4 – In 2021, a score of 640 gives a rank of 6 thousand, in 2022 it gives 7 thousand, in 2023 it gives 10 thousand. This is a very good rank, one gets a seat in government colleges in every state. This year in 2024, a rank of 40 thousand has been obtained on the same score. Is such anomaly possible?

answer – We have never seen such anomalies. NTA said that we made the paper from NCERT. That is why the paper became easy and the cutoff and merit went up. If we believe NTA for a while, but it has happened that more than seven people got the same marks. Many people got marks above 650. So why do you make such a paper? Then you have made the exam of rejection into the exam of selection.

In its defense, this line comes that we did this to reduce depression among children so that they do not take any wrong steps. See, now the children are getting higher marks.

I am saying that this is not a board examination. If you give 95% to all the students, it does not mean that they will not get depressed. In NEET, you may give 700 out of 720 marks to any number of students, even if you give 715 to any number of students, but the number of seats is limited. In such a situation, the depression of the child will reduce only when the number of seats increases. If a student is not getting admission in his/her favourite college even after scoring 100 marks, then he/she will definitely get depressed.

Question 5 – Can giving grace marks to 1563 students cause such a big mess in the overall result?

answer – This is absolutely not possible. 1563 is a fake number that NTA has created itself. NTA is admitting on record that the paper was delayed in 6 centres in 4 states. Wrong paper was distributed. There is no proof of this and no investigation has been done on this.

I believe that there are not just 4 states, there are more than that. These are not just 6 centres, there are more than that. Grace was given to 1563 children, but this number is much more than that.

At an average of 500 students at 6 centres, there should be 3000 students. So have you given grace marks to specific rooms? NTA has admitted in the Supreme Court that grace marks have been given to the entire centre. That means this number should be much more than 1500.

There are CCTV footages of 50 thousand rooms installed at 4750 centers. It is not possible to check so much footage. In the case of CLAT exam of 2018, the Supreme Court had said that there are many children who do not reach the court, they should also have been given a chance to file a complaint. For this, you create an email ID and take complaints from the children. CLAT had initially said that 25 children are victims, while in the end the number came out to be 5667. In the case of NEET too, the correct number will be more than 2 lakh.

On the first day of the Supreme Court hearing, NTA says that they are cancelling the scorecards of 1563 candidates. This means that now the whole world will never know what the actual marks were. How many students were given grace marks and how many states they belonged to.

Question 6 – In the case of Haryana student Yash Kataria, he has got 78 grace marks. That means the final score increased from the original score of 640 to 718. On what basis has NTA given these grace marks?

answer – NTA said that we have given grace marks on the basis of time loss. We have used the 2018 judgment of the Supreme Court which says that in case of time loss, you can give grace marks by calculating the answering efficiency.

Answering efficiency has two parts-

1. The speed of answering the child

2. Accuracy

Suppose a child got the paper 1 hour late. Then he started solving it. Usually in NEET exam, the child solves the biology section first. He solves 90 questions in 45 to 50 minutes. So his speed is 2 questions in 1 minute. In the beginning, the child starts solving only those questions about which he is sure.

In such a situation, it appears that the answering efficiency of the child is not real. The child’s answering efficiency deteriorates in the last one hour of the paper. This means that you are judging the child on his best performance but evaluating him on his worst performance.

Apart from this, suppose a student gets a delay of 20 minutes in getting the paper. He attempts all the questions in the remaining time and gets 680 marks out of 720. In this case, NTA will also have to give 20 minutes grace. If 20 minutes grace is calculated, it comes to 50 marks.